[00:10.46]I look around me and the room has changed imperceptibly and overtly.
[00:17.08]There are elephants on thin legs lining the walls, the people around me have become giant insects,
[00:25.68]my watch melts and slowly drips from my wrist. A Dalinian dream? A Kafkaesque nightmare?
[00:36.62]The breeze of surrealism blows through my hair; an existential whirlwind captures my imagination.
[00:45.73]In the images of these two great creators,
[00:49.24]I see reflections of beautiful and insatiable imaginations, completely undisciplined, unbounded;
[00:58.51]yet full of the magic and power of the artists’ visions.
[01:03.90]These images are not as true as photographs, but they are a hundred times more honest.
[01:11.83]I, too, often find myself misrepresenting the world.
[01:16.64]In the midst of a truly dreary lecture I sometimes force wakefulness upon myself by images of what I am learning,
[01:27.32]and instead of seeing my teacher carrying on about the military campaigns of the Civil War,
[01:35.09]I see muskets blazing against raised flags.
[01:40.28]More often, I see my life as an adventure; romanticized, idealized, exhilarating.
[01:48.78]Instead of seeing a boring test of memory, I see a test of will; instead of a debate,
[01:58.16]I see a battle of wits; instead of seeing the photographic image of life,
[02:06.22]I see the existential and intoxicating war of man against Fate itself.
[02:15.85]In these images I am sometimes challenged by faceless opponents,
[02:21.69]sometimes I am climbing a mountain. Perhaps I am fighting a bull or jumping on rooftops.
[02:30.18]At times I question the benefits of reinventing the world to suit my fancy.
[02:37.30]It is true, of course, that everyone does this.
[02:42.02]Even the strictest of thinkers cannot avoid letting their own vision of the world show through in their works.
[02:50.05]Dali and Kafka are not exceptions, they are extremes. Why are we all so eager to get away from reality?
[03:02.10]I find that I, like many others, often don’t seem to fuly belong. But of course I do belong,
[03:11.81]this is my world as much as anyone else’s.
[03:16.22]I try to solve this contradiction between the perceived and the real by altering the world ever so slightly
[03:26.53]- a horse drawn carriage instead of a car, a prize winning essay rather than another homework assignment
[03:34.74]- so that it finds its place around me.
[03:38.03]A simple solution indeed.
[03:41.17]We do not change ourselves to fit the world, but change the world to fit within us.
[03:49.31]A simple act of wish fulfillment, and all is done.
[03:53.95]And, of course, to melt a watch with the mind is far better than to enslave the intellect within the watch
[04:02.76]like a genie in a bottle.
[04:05.63]Freedom to think requires only so little,
[04:09.77]and to adjust the world to one’s thought is ever more noble than adjusting thought to the world.
